Lydia Ridding, English Subject Advisor

Although I am not a standardised assessor for English Language, I was an English teacher for many years and marked more mock papers than I care to remember. The best way to understand principles of marking and understanding the mark schemes is to become an assessor yourself – but if you are new to our specification, or if the summer exam series feels like a long way off, this blog will give you some pointers on marking accurately and helping your students to succeed.

Question 1

On both component papers for J351, the first question is designed to be a warm-up for candidates, to ease them into the paper and to build confidence in the exam hall. There are no trick questions! 

You can encourage students to do well by making sure they respond to the material within the specified section of the text. If the question directs them to lines 1-5 of the extract, they will not get marks for using quotations or points from elsewhere in the text. In my experience it helps candidates if, when you mark their mocks, you are honest about their actual attainment. 

Don’t be tempted to award the marks on the basis that if they had used the correct lines they would have secured the marks. Another important detail to note is when the task says ‘give’ words or phrases, examiners expect to see direct quotations. 

Let’s look at Q1 (a) from the June 2024 Component 2 exam:

Question 1 is about Text 1, Paradise by Abdulrazak Gurnah. 

1        Look at lines 1–5. 

(a)     Give three words or phrases that show what the dogs do at night.   

[3]The following excerpt from the June 2024 Examiner’s Report for Component 2 serves as an excellent reminder to be judicious about evidence selected from the extracts. The bracketed words indicate how much excess was allowed outside a correct response (the correct answer is in bold).

Award one mark for any of the following up to a maximum of three marks: 

• ‘(they were) plagued (by dogs)’ 
• ‘(dogs which)‘roamed (the dark streets)’  
• ‘(The dogs) roamed (in packs)’ 
• ‘loping (and alert)’ 
• '(as they) scuffled (in shadows and thickets)' 
• ‘(their) scuttling (paws on the road)’ 
• ‘(they) ran (past)’ 
• '(four dogs) standing immobile (across the road from them)'  

Where candidates offered too much excess, the response could not be considered to meet the AO1 requirements ‘to identify’ and ‘to select’.

Question 2, Component 1

This question is designed to test synthesis skills. Examiners have shared successful models on how to respond in the past: candidates could write three paragraphs, each starting with a clear explanation of one idea that connects the two extracts. This explanation should focus on just one idea. The explanation of the idea that links the two texts should be supported by specific evidence from each text. 

This may take the form of a quotation with an explanation but it is often far better presented as an explanation with a key word or phrase embedded within the explanation. Candidates sometimes use material from the introduction in the box above the extract as evidence to support their point. This is not rewarded as it is not from the text itself. Quotations without explanations are sometimes offered in response to this question but can’t always be rewarded as the quotations’ relevance is not always clear. 

Similarities based on language – such as that they are both written in the first person – are not relevant in the June 24 paper as the question is not about the texts but about the writers’ lives.

Question 3, both components

The language and structure question. At OCR we think it is important to the academic integrity of English and chances of student success to test close analysis of language and structure together. This often leads to queries about how much students should write about each of them. 

Guidance from our examiners’ reports confirms that candidates will ideally strike a balance between the two. This doesn’t mean that we can prescribe a set number of points for language and for structure, however, good advice is to use the space in the answer booklet as an indicator of how much to write - the best answers often fill the space but remain concise and don’t stray onto extra paper. Obviously, some allowances need to be made for different sizes of handwriting. 

In terms of the content itself, candidates should avoid feature-spotting or using complex terminology that they don’t fully understand. Analysing techniques used by the writer is always most effective when the student is able to tease out how meaning is created and the particular effects achieved. 

We are sometimes asked what constitutes ‘language’ and ‘structure’. Think of language as anything at an individual word level, like exploring the connotations of the word ‘frozen’, for example, and structure as anything that goes beyond individual words, like repetition, to name but one. 

Question 4, both papers

Question 4, worth 18 marks, is the highest tariff question on both exam papers. For this reason, it is assumed that students are devoting enough time and energy to not just the writing of the response but thinking carefully about it beforehand. Advise students to read both extracts in full before attempting the question. 

Although timings are always tight in exams, it’s a great idea to spend a few minutes jotting down a plan. Long form answers can sometimes suffer when candidates lose their train of thought part-way through - having a plan to refer back to (even just a few bullet points as a guide) can be really helpful. The question itself is always structured in the same way, with a statement, followed by a question and some bullet point guidance, as in this example from the June 2024 Component 1 paper:

Question 4 is about Text 1, Autobiography by Joseph Carey Merrick and Text 2, My Left Foot by Christy Brown. 

4     ‘Both texts show how the writers successfully overcame the challenges they faced.’ 

        How far do you agree with this statement? 

        In your answer you should: 

• discuss what we learn about the challenges each writer faced 
• explain how far you agree that the writers overcame their challenges successfully 
• compare the ways the texts present the writers overcoming challenges. 

Support your response with quotations from Text 1 and Text 2.                                     [18]

Candidates should begin by responding directly to the statement in a concise introductory paragraph. There are some good examples of how to do this in the Candidate Exemplars documents on Teach Cambridge. Note that there are 3 bullet points in the question, reflecting the weightings of the assessment objectives in the mark scheme. 

The first two bullet points relate to AO4 (evaluation), worth 12 marks in question 4, whereas the last bullet point relates to AO3 (comparison), worth only 6 marks. Candidates should think carefully about structuring their responses so that comparisons are made throughout the answer, perhaps foregrounded in topic sentences at the start of paragraphs, and that the majority of the response addresses the key terms of the statement while critically evaluating it. The mark scheme instructs assessors to ‘accept all valid evaluations which are supported by appropriate, integrated references to both texts’, something worth keeping in mind when marking those mock papers. 

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